


certain things are crossed out

by Murf1307



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Darwin Comes Back, Darwin Lives, First Kiss, Inspired by Richard Siken, M/M, Reunions, referenced canonical character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-10-27
Packaged: 2019-08-08 10:10:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16427372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: Alex and Darwin, in metaphorical conversation with the works of Richard Siken.





	certain things are crossed out

**Author's Note:**

> All italicized portions are excerpts of Richard Siken poems, sourced from richardsikendaily.tumblr.com.

_you said I could have anything I wanted, but i  
_ _just couldn’t say it out loud._

  


The thing is: this isn't safe.   _They_ aren't safe.

Sure, they never will be, not really, with the world how it is.  And Armando understands that, has always understood it, down deep in his instincts:

Wanting Alex Summers is dangerous.

Not because _Alex_ is dangerous.  He is — to everyone else.  Armando can handle the heat, so that's not a consideration.

No, the danger comes from the world outside the two of them, which will try to destroy the both of them if it ever finds them out.  And while Armando won’t die from that, Alex _could._

And Armando’s not going to ask him to take that risk.

So he doesn’t say anything.  He wants to, wants to touch Alex, wants to wrap himself around him until the world _can’t_ touch them.  But he doesn’t say or do anything, because he can’t.

Not yet.

He looks over Alex’s shoulder at the score on the pinball machine as it rises.

Tomorrow, maybe, he’ll have the nerve.  

Tomorrow, he might be able to make a move.

_We’ve read_  
_the back of the book, we know what’s going to happen._  
_The fields burned, the land destroyed, the lovers left  
broken in the brown dirt._

 

Alex would have died, easy, if it would’ve meant not having to feel like this.

There isn’t even _ash_ , when he finally can move, scrambling to the spot where Darwin had been standing before that flash of white light.  There’s just...nothing.

Darwin’s just _gone._

He swallows, slumped on his knees in space Darwin used to occupy, his chest so tight it’s hard to breathe.  

He inhales, anyway, a thousand worlds away from the sound of the others approaching.  He can’t conceive of anything but this right now, anything but the pain of having _done_ this.

Because of course it’s his fault.  He fired those rings of energy that Shaw shoved into Darwin’s mouth; that’s why he could just absorb the blowback when it hit.  

Darwin is _gone_ , and it’s _his_ fault.

He doesn’t realize it when he starts crying, choking on his own breaths, heaving dry as he can’t come to grips with the reality of it.

Someone pulls him to his feet.  He doesn’t know who.

Right now, he doesn’t care.

 _your coworkers ask_  
_if everything’s okay and you tell them_  
_you’re just tired._  
_and you’re trying to smile.  and they’re trying to smile._  


He hates the focus plate.  It’s a weight on his chest, heavy and unwieldy, and he practically tears it off after every session he spends down in the bunker.

The only person here who understands the wound in him is Erik, and that’s _fucked up_.  The others just try to tiptoe around the hole in the world next to him, and it’s a farce, to see something and pretend they don’t.

Darwin is dead.  Darwin is always going to _be_ dead.

And Alex is going to have to stay alive, even when his chest wants to explode, when the sun lights up his veins and he _wants_ to die.

“How are you doin’, man?” Sean asks, one night in August, when they’ve broken into Charles’s liquor cabinet and gotten wasted.  “Like, really?”

Alex shakes his head.  “I’m alive.”

That’s the long and short of it: living is all he can do now.

He thinks that’s what Darwin would have wanted, for Alex to adapt to survive.  Darwin wanted them all to stay alive and together, and it killed him.

 _Alex_ killed him.

Again, he just has to live with that.  


_there’s smashed glass glittering everywhere like stars.  it’s a western,_  
_Henry.  it’s a downright shoot-em-up.  we’ve made a graveyard  
out of the bone white afternoon._

 

Cuba is just another variant on Virginia, on Hell, and Alex finds he's good at this.  He's good at it, and almost enjoys it.

For just a minute on the beach, before Erik rips the team in half, Alex wonders how many men he must've killed today, and how, in the moment, he doesn't care.  The sand glimmers glassy in sunlight that's too bright, and the sky is too blue — blue and yellow and white are the colors of the day, it seems.

Then, Erik brings Shaw's corpse out into it, a black splotch on the white beach and blue sky.

Erik's revolutionary rhetoric matters less, though, than the solid reality of that corpse.  Shaw is _dead._ Shaw is dead, and Alex is looking at his dead body, and that's all that matters.

Shaw can never use him as a weapon ever again.

In this moment, when the bombs fall out of the sky, he decides that _no one_ ever will.

 _that’s how you cheat death.  Well, maybe  
_ _you could.  If you messed it up real bad maybe death would get confused._

 

Coming back to life is a hell of a feat, but Armando manages it, dragging his atoms back together over the course of two years.  He wakes up in the middle of the rubble, untouched over that span of time except to reclaim the human bodies --

And he finds himself alone in Virginia, uncertain where he’s going next.

It takes an hour to find a gas station, to find out the year.  The white lady behind the counter is broad shouldered, her hair cropped short.  She eyes him, just a little suspicious. “Might wanna buy a pair of shades, fella,” she tells him.

“No money,” he tells her, raising his palms resignedly.

She sighs.  “Just take ‘em, then.  Eyes like that ‘ll get you shot around here.”

He frowns a little, not sure what she means, and then sees his reflection in one of the pairs of sunglasses.

His iris, his pupils -- they look just _gone_.  His whole eye is white.

He nods, and chooses a pair, and heads on his way, grateful for her intervention.  Maybe he can’t die, but he _really_ doesn’t need to get shot.

He needs to find Alex.

_Do you know how it ends?  Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now?_

 

It takes weeks and weeks to work his way up the Eastern Seaboard.  He has to hide his eyes the whole way, even after he finds out the world _knows_ about mutants now.

Because Erik shot JFK.

That’s utterly surreal, to Armando.  The world is new, but arguably worse now.  And so he needs to find Alex in it, if -- and this is the part he doesn’t want to think about -- if Alex is still even in it.

But there’s an Xavier-Marko Estate in upstate New York, and he’s heard whispers about an _Xavier Institute for Gifted Youth._

If Alex is anywhere, he’ll be there.  


_There are things worth arguing about and fighting for.  But I’m not a soldier --  
_ _not that kind of soldier --_

 

Alex isn’t waiting for what he’s sure will never happen.  Hank said, once, his voice trembling when they set the memorial up, that maybe they’d all come back.  

_There’s no bodies, Alex.  Maybe they’ll all come back someday._

Alex knows better.  That’s not how the world works.  People die, and they disappear, and that’s just dying, too, after a fashion.  They’re just all gone.

But Alex won’t say it.  He doesn’t want to fight about it.

He’s so, _so_ tired of fighting.

So he just...exists.  Kids don’t come back to the school, caught by the war or by parents afraid of the war.

Maybe he should go be a soldier.  

It’s not breaking a vow if nobody else knows you ever made it, is it?

Charles starts drinking.  Hank doesn’t leave his lab.  The basement gets bigger, and Hank disappears deeper into it.  Charles finishes Cerebro, but doesn’t want to use it.

Hank fights with Charles about that.   _What if they’re alive?  Don’t you want to know?_

Alex doesn’t, not really.

Not anymore.

_He was not dead yet, not exactly —_  
_parts of him were dead already, certainly other parts were still only waiting  
for something to happen, something grand_

 

September in upstate New York is awash with red and gold, the autumn leaves on trees consuming everything.  Armando’s never seen anything like it, and it reminds him of Alex in a way that makes his chest ache.

Finally, he finds the mansion.  And there it is, _The Xavier Institute_ , beyond stone gates, and Armando slips inside, slipping off his sunglasses.

Here, he knows he won’t need them.

He reaches the door, and knocks, hoping that Alex will be the one to answer.  In the last weeks, he’s been able to think of little else beyond this potential reunion.

What they could have had aches in the back of his mind, at the core of his spine.

The door opens, and, sure enough, it’s Alex.  He looks older, sadder, but he’s alive, and right now, that’s the only thing Armando really needed: to see for himself that Alex had survived.

“Y-you — Darwin?  Is that — are you — you’re _dead_?”  Alex’s voice catches, then cracks, his posture slumping as though he can’t bear standing anymore.

“Not so much _dead_ as _lost_ , but I’m back now.”  He grins, taking Alex’s hands.

Alex shakes off his grip, but throws himself at him, arms flung around his neck.  “I — shit, Darwin, you, you _came back._ ”

Armando wraps his arms around his waist.  “Yes, I did.”

 _they want you to love the whole damn world but you won’t,  
_ _you want it all narrowed down_

 

Alex can’t let go of him, because _shit,_ Darwin’s alive, and Alex doesn’t believe in miracles, but this is one right in front of his face, so he doesn’t have to believe much of anything to bury his face in Darwin’s neck.

The world could end around them and he couldn’t care at all, because he has this one moment, and if he dies right now, he’ll die happy, Darwin’s arms around his waist.

“How the hell — how did this…?” he asks, and his voice is wet.

Darwin holds him tighter.  “Guess it took me a little while to adapt.”

Finally, he pulls back, to look at him again, his hands framing Darwin’s face.  It’s just like he remembers, but completely hairless, and his eyes are all white now.  He’s come back a little different, but shit, he’s gorgeous.

Darwin’s hands are settled in the small of Alex’s back, and this isn’t how friends reunite, it’s not.

So he presses his mouth to Darwin’s, and lets his insides collapse with love.


End file.
